


The Chamber of Secrets

by KillerKookaburra666



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hogwarts Founders Era, Slytherin's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 08:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillerKookaburra666/pseuds/KillerKookaburra666
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To protect our legacy and the treasure within, we four each gave one final defensive measure in the likeness of our own minds. Godric's courage, Rowena's ingenuity, Helga's compassion, and my own ruthlessness united in a single-minded task for all time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chamber of Secrets

Many called us the brightest of our time, and I am inclined to agree. Brilliant, yes. Together the four of us performed magic others could scarcely fathom. We built something from the ideals we held paramount and watched it flourish.

A school, we called it, but Hogwarts was always something more, something deeper. It was a school, a home, a world complete within itself but, first and foremost, a fortress. We four, in building Hogwarts, made it our sacred duty to protect young witches and wizards at all costs. And each of us left some piece of ourselves to shield the school’s inhabitants in the years to come.

Godric enchanted the sorting hat from which any “true Gryffindor” could retrieve a goblin-crafted sword. He always believed most in the importance of a leader in waging war. Nobody wielding his blade could ever help but inspire the loyalty and belief of the masses.

Rowena, a strategist more than a warrior, designed hundreds of hidden passages within and out of the castle to provide the school’s defenders with a tactical advantage when fighting within the walls of Hogwarts or, at the very least, means by which to escape if the need were ever to arise. She understood that some battles weren’t worth fighting.

Employing perhaps the most beautiful magic any of us had seen before–or ever saw again–Helga built what she called “a room of requirement” which tailored itself to the specific needs of its user when it did appear. No matter how trivial or dire the need, her room morphed to meet it.  

And I built my Chamber of Secrets. The truth has been warped over the years, and the chamber’s purpose along with it, becoming something corrupt. I didn’t want those of muggle birth to be permitted into the school, I even left over that belief, but the chamber had been there since we first began building the castle and was never meant to avenge my dissent. I alone had discovered the secret to Parseltongue, the language of serpents; so, as Gryffindor chose his progeny, so too did I by enchanting the language into my blood, so my descendants would be able to control the beast I hid.

The basilisk would be able to travel silently through pipes in the castle walls, emerging only to strike against an enemy as commanded. This was my contribution to Hogwarts’s defense, a creature so lethal as to be used only in the darkest of times: the perfect guardian of our legacy.

But when the darkest times came, they came in my blood– a fitting price for my betrayal, and one that was paid for in the blood of children slaughtered in my name by the very guardian I'd entrusted them to. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because the circumstances of Slytherin's chamber always struck me as odd. I may decide to add chapters but for right now am at a loss.


End file.
